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How many of you use a cross-slide vise in your drill press?
It is the closest thing to a cnc machine as I have. My drill press will turn just fast enough to mill wood with a router bit.
X-Y baby!

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I bought one on sale from harbouring freight very useful. I use it in conjunction with a 25yr old taiwanese drill press

That be very cool!
Where'd you get that,
and how much?

It's a Shop Fox so it will be easy enough to find. Sure looks a lot better than the piece of hooey I purchased from Harbor Frieght.

A machinist's rotary table would be a real nice next step for your drill press tooling.

I got it from Griz. @ $55.

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Tool options are more limited here in AU than they are in USA. Here it seems that its either the top of the wazza full on cross slide machinist table with british made sine vice for two and a half wheel barrows full of $50 notes, or the lowest rank nasty asian knock off of a cross slide vice for 1 x $50 note, and except for the higher end asian knock off cross slides that eye patched retailer try to palm off as "precision" machinist tools and charge 1.75 wheel barrow loads of $50 notes for, there is nothing in between.

Obviously I went with the bottom end crackle black painted asian job that had a fair bit of play right out the box. But one of the reasons they are cheap is that they have never been fettled and set up, and just like a cheap new hand plane, these things really do benefit from a bit of time and effort as soon as you get them home.

First thing is to completely strip them down, everything that fits to something else that can be removed is removed. Then you give all the loose bits a good wash in degreaser to get rid of the factory filings and packing gunk, that looks suspiciously like ear wax, so you can see what you are working with.

Next, after careful examination of the everything but especially the dove tail slides, get out the file and knock off any burs, casting edges and other anomalies. Go over the whole thing fitting A to B of each bit by hand and examine how they mate up..or don't, and then do what you can to make the best of things.

When your done, wash all the bits you have worked on again to remove the grit and allow them to dry thoroughly before applying a dry lube such as SilberGleit (Sliver Glide) http://www.carbatec.com.au/silverglide-dry-slip_c19708 or even paste wax to all machined surfaces. Let that dry 'really' well and then remove excess before reassembling the vice in a methodical way focusing careful attention upon evening out the tension of gib screws to remove all play from the slides, but still allowing free movement.

No, doing all this will not polish the turd, but it will roll it in sprinkles and that's at least a bit nicer to work with.

Cheers

Kim

I use mine a lot too. My drill press is on the slow side for router bits, but the cross vise is still handy for all sorts of things.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

i use mine all the time. very very useful tool

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brendan 3.0 new and improved, with better interpersonal subroutines

There is a model out there with the name " Palmgren" it is a fairly decent little cross slide vise at a fairly reasonable price . The bottom line is all the cheaper ones are Imports. For an american made , you will easily spend 600-800 dollars .

The shopfox in the pic above looks amazingly like the palmgren , same color even , It is quite possible they have come off same production line .

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I'm lucky enough to have a milling machine so can't talk about the cross-slide vise but I use 4-flute endmills on wood all the time with good results. Speeds are about the same as a drillpress. I do headstock slots and other "milling" tasks this way. I've tried router bits - The endmills work better for me.

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I have an inexpensive one I haven't used yet. Kim, many thanks for the step-by-step on how to optimize one of these.

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Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."

i want a milling machine...i can think of a ton of applications for it. do you use it for slotted headstocks? what else do you use it for?

thanks

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brendan 3.0 new and improved, with better interpersonal subroutines

Kim is there an OZ version of craigslist?/ a second hand online source for used tools?? or do a lot of OZ/kiwi builders come up with creative DIY procedures to overcome tool mania ?? just wondering. When I was in vancouver BC in the 70/s and 80/s I ran into the same problem high quality usa/ british/jap/cdn/ german tools vs low end crapola from taiwan and china. With a wife 2kids and a mortgage. I settled on high end taiwanese shop machinery, which after 25 plus yrs of use is still running here in KC cheers ernie. Ps I bought the harbouring freight chinese version. For the number of times I use it , it is very adequate for woodworking. For metalwork I would look elsewhere.

I agree that it's a very useful tool. I would caution readers who might not be experienced with drill presses:
Some of them can't achieve the speeds required for milling or routing and they really aren't designed to take much lateral thrust. Thus...very light cuts, very light feed pressure to the side, and don't be surprised if you need to change bearings out soon. But even if you're not attempting those milling operations, it's a great tool for locating a series of bores, or for precisely centering a bore.

Yes! I am always on the lookout for the smaller mills (i.e. the built in cross slide!) like the Clausing 8520 or the Rockwell mills similar to these here:

http://bridgeport.askmisterscience.com/smallmills.htm

They unfortunately have gotten very expensive but if you take your time they are still available for a reasonable price. I got a Clausing 8520 a few months ago with collets, a nice Albrecht chuck and a power feed for a little over $300. I already had one but someone will get a deal passed on when I decide which to keep.

I can think of so much stuff I want to do with them,
wood things like slotting and precise shaping
making tooling like fancy rosette cutters or binding cutters
up to (someday) making my own tuning machines (I'm nowhere near that yet)

On many of these smaller mills you can easily either upgrade the motor to get a higher spindle speed (or go to variable DC or VFD) or better yet mount a router fixture off off the back or side and really get the speeds you need for small work. I haven't done it yet but it is in the plans.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Excellent point! Effectively doubling the spindle speed.

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